Echoes (IV) The Wheel's Kick
by Soo W
Summary: Angelus finds the past has a greater hold over him than ever. As he waits for the chance to consummate his obsession with Anna, more memories swamp his conscious hours, and he turns to Darla for help.
1. Default Chapter

Echoes (IV) The Wheel's Kick 1/3

Disclaimer: These characters belong to WB/Joss/Fox etc etc, but certainly not to me. I'm only writing this for fun and therapy. And because there are NEVER, ever, enough flashbacks. 

Pairing: Angelus/Liam/Anna 

Spoilers: Based loosely on events in Becoming and The Prodigal 

Short Summary: Angelus finds the past has a greater hold over him than ever. As he waits for the chance to consummate his obsession with Anna, more memories swamp his conscious hours, and he turns to Darla for help. Angelus' POV. 

Feedback: Yes please. The address is soofic@hotmail.com - I'd love to hear from you if you're reading and always reply to feedback! 

Comments: Follows on from "Echoes (III) - Chosen". Fourth in the "Echoes" series. The "Echoes" series is a sequel to Pen Pictures, and the whole lot starts from the premise that Liam was having an affair with Anna (the servant who appears in a flashback in AtS) before he was turned. [ There will be five in this series altogether: "Caught Red-Handed" from Liam's POV, "Still Life" from Darla's POV, "Chosen" from Anna's POV, "The Wheel's Kick" from Angelus' POV and "Kaleidoscopic" from everyone's POV. ]

Echoes (IV) The Wheel's Kick 1/3 

When I was a child, my Father took me frequently to a beach near our home. He would hold my small, cold hand in his large warm one, and deliberately swing our arms a little too roughly, so mine would feel like it was going to part company with my shoulder, and I would have to beg him to stop, half-laughing, half-pleading. We would walk along the margin of the bay and he would tell me confidentially about his business plans. If I listened attentively enough he might swoop down and pick me up, and perhaps let me ride on his shoulders.

I remember one day we flew a kite that he'd made for me. It was an unnaturally still day, and we didn't have much luck, until an unexpected gust of air blew it from my hands suddenly and tossed it into the sky. The skein unravelled and unravelled through my fingers, and my Father whooped as the kite went higher and higher, and then the string snapped and it was lost. 

I expected a cuff around the head for that, but my Father seemed transfixed as the kite looped and whirled, out over the waves, out of our sight. Later, he bought me another from a travelling pedlar, but we never flew it together, and so it remained safely stored under my bed for many years.

On one of these occasions, we saw a beautiful ship, fat and squat on the water, rolling gently from side to side on the swell of the sea, with a steady wind in her sails, unfurled and full to bursting. My Father's family had always been involved with the sea, and I think he saw his profession as a come down, although he made more money and it was a more settled way of life for my Mother. He was a proud and haughty man, but always had great respect for the common seafarers he met in the course of his trade, and treated them as his equals, although most of them could never aspire to his wealth and social standing.

As the ship rounded the bay and disappeared from our sight, he murmured a scrap of poetry, the only time I recall him quoting anything that wasn't from the bible.

"All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by..."

I asked him what it was, and after I pleaded with him and promised to behave myself forevermore if he complied, he recited the whole verse. 

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,  
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,  
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,  
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I recall asking him how a whale could kick when it didn't have any feet, and he laughed and told me I hadn't been listening, as usual. The "wheel's kick", he explained, is the sudden jerk of the ship's wheel in the captain's hands, when the waves or the current move against the tiller, and try to take the boat their own way. A captain has to be ready for the kick, he told me, and must be strong enough to hold the boat on course, or it might hive off to the rocks and be smashed. On the other hand, the boat is made of wood, and the sea is stronger, so the captain must give a little to the kick sometimes, if he doesn't want the wheel to come off in his hands or to lose the tiller altogether.

"Angelus? Where are you?"

She's back. I scramble the scribbled scraps of paper together, and shove them behind a large volume of history on the bookcase. By the time she enters the room, I am reclining in one of the opulent chairs, and pretending to be in a doze.

I sense her as she bends over me, and fear that I'm in for some punishment. She'll know I've been writing down memories again. She'll be able to tell just by looking at me.

But when I open my eyes, she is smiling at me. "Guess what?" She's brimming over with glee about something.

"What?"

She places her reticule on my stomach and opens it to pull forth a scrap of paper. The same kind of paper that I've been scribbling on all evening. I try not to gulp. If she knew, she wouldn't play games like this. She'd just break my leg.

"This," she makes the paper into a rigid v-shape and scrapes it down the side of my face, "is an address. Now, can you tell me who's address you think I've found?"


	2. Chapter 2

Echoes (IV) The Wheel's Kick 2/3 Echoes (IV) The Wheel's Kick 2/3 

This time I managed to keep a secret for almost an hour. At first her news blotted it out, and then her requirement that I please her as a reward kept my thoughts away from the little stash of papers. As she stretched languorously afterwards, a little mushroom of fear budded inside my head, and she was instantly attentive, watchful. Then a ship paddled into my minds eye, to be followed shortly by kites, sand dunes, windy days and the whole panoply of forbidden treasures. Uncontrollable.

Sexual release worked wonders for her mood. On this occasion she was more disappointed than angry. 

I'd already had the lecture all about the importance of the past to a vampire, but I prefer advice to torture, so I listened attentively. She is at her most beautiful, when she talks like this. Usually we have just fed, or made love, or both at the same time, and are reclining, entwined, in front of a fire. Her skin, which is normally a little too pale, takes on a reddish hue from the flames; her hair becomes less colourless too, appearing honeyed and rich instead of whiteish blond. She stares into the fire, like an enormous, flaxen-winged moth, lured by the warmth.

According to her lore, the past, or our perception of it, is inextricably linked with our ability to face the future, our "eternity", whether that measures a hundred years, or four hundred or a thousand. To reach, as she puts it, an accommodation with the past, is essential. Without it, we are still fettered to the human world, and nothing good ever comes of that.

They are animals. They are our prey. 

However, we are forced to use them to give ourselves substance, and no habitation is ever perfect. Although our possession is irreversible, it is never complete. Something, some aspect of the host always remains. Because we use their brains to have consciousness, to move our limbs, even to reason, we are to some degree stuck with their mode of thinking. 

"Liam is dead. I killed him. You are not him, but you will live with his peculiarities, his desires, for a long time, perhaps forever. Humans who know about us are obsessed by the idea of a soul departing. Well, that is their belief. In reality, what is departed is much more subtle."

Firstly, she explained, I would never be troubled by conscience. Secondly, I would be driven by my own needs and wants. Beyond these two truths, many lives were possible. Some vampires formed attachments to their own kind and those feelings were real, but put two vampires together in a room and explain that only one may leave alive, and whatever attachment exists between them, they will fight each other to the death. Some vampires prefer to be alone from the beginning.

She smiled at me indulgently, and told me that many vampires were troubled by memories of their human past. For Darla, it is not a question of forgetting, but putting the past where it where it belongs. Vampires who seek to remain part of their former, human world, find they cannot, because the human world works in an entirely different way. Humans multiply and survive in great numbers by having a belief in the common good, in social order, in selflessness. They believe, at least in theory, in all these concepts, but they are concepts that a vampire, in the essence, can know nothing.

"If you cannot be satisfied with your past, my own, it will haunt you. You have found this already with your father. He died, and you rejoiced. But now, your human brain regrets your haste. It tells you he should have loved you for what you were, and your vampire selfishness wants it to be so, because then you could just forget him and set about the more rapid acquisition of the things you now want. But instead of accepting that the pain of this relationship is in the past, you write down reams of memories, in the hope that one day, one day, there will be a memory which proves his love. And then your human brain will be satisfied and stop tormenting you with dreams of love you cannot appreciate and do not want."

She went on, talking about love, all kinds of love. It was not that a vampire could not harbour desires for someone living, or that those desires could not be long-lasting, but they couldn't be love, not in the human sense of the word. A true human love would contain an element of selflessness, and that was a quality quite absent from a vampire's nature.

As she was in such a friendly mood, I asked her why I did not treasure memories of my mother, or Kathy. She laughed, "Because, my sweet, those relationships were purely loving ones when you lived. As calm as the sea on midsummer's day - no resentments, no hidden hatreds or torments. Once your capacity to love was removed, they became nothing; their life and death became meaningless, except that their blood was food or their stupidity might provide access to a forbidden dwelling. But other than that, you are indifferent to them, and so should you be. What are they to you now? What can they provide that you want?"

In contrast, she said I could not bear to leave Anna behind to live out the rest of her life. Because my mind was so bent towards having her when I lived, there was so huge an unrequited and unsatisfied passion, that now the echoes of it haunted me. 

"If you truly loved her, you'd leave this city and her, and never come back. But you haven't. Between your human forbear and her were all the important questions, unresolved. Did he love her? Did she love him? Did they, either of them, love each other enough for the troubles that undoubtedly lay ahead? You cannot lay her to rest in your head until you concede that these questions are now meaningless. And, in addition, there are those wants that mark the common ground between you and Liam, those urges he felt too, but contained, those questions that remain: can I take her now? can I finally have what I want?"

She turned towards me and ran her finger though my hair. 

"Because want is all you're capable of now, my sweet. There is no ought, or can't, or won't, or respect for her feelings. Or love, most assuredly, there is no love."

"There are merely wants. Some wants are capable of being satisfied, and some wants are not."

She said that at present, I was allowing myself to be detained her on a fool's errand. I was pursuing a woman to my own destruction, when there was no reason to desire her more than any other equally as pretty. 

"And if you could keep her, would you be satisfied? Of course not - there can be nothing lasting between you. Because you are now incapable of feeling as she does, and if she knew what you were, she would feel nothing but horror. The echoes are like a false light on the shore. They lead you in, and all you will find for your trouble is jagged rocks, half submerged, and the wreckers on the beach."

As I lay on the velvet cushions and watched the shadows cast by the flames on her skin, she became at once serious.

"You must end it, for your own sake, and the sooner the better."


	3. Chapter 3

Echoes (IV) The Wheel's Kick 3/3 Echoes (IV) The Wheel's Kick 3/3 

A cool breeze washes down the Thames from the sea. Water is plashing round the columns that hold up the bridge, and further away, I swear I can hear waves crashing onto a shingled beach. 

I'm early. I tried to contain my eagerness to come out. Darla is a changeful woman - on one occasion she laughs at me and grants me leave with a kiss, then next she is cold and disdainful, and sometimes she slashes at me with her nails, drawing blood which she does not even bother to lick away. 

So I do my best to be nonchalant, as if it scarcely matters whether I am on time, or even go at all. It is just an amusement, and if the girl does not show up, it will be of no consequence. Indeed, I may not even go to the bridge - if some other pretty face takes my fancy on the way.

What good it does to pretend I have no idea; I have the feeling that Darla knows what goes on inside my head as well as I do, and is not fooled. As she always predicted, the slight preference I had for coming to find Anna rather than travelling to Europe immediately has metamorphosed over the past weeks. At first it became a longing, some dull ache in my chest just below my still heart. Then an obsession that would not allow me to attend to anything else or bear to hear of us leaving London. 

And now, it is all consuming. The fact that she lives is inimical to my peace of mind; I cannot bear that she, who was mine in life, who used to care for me and consider my pleasure first and foremost, now walks the streets in daylight and forms bonds with other people, other men. 

I see her.

She's entering the bridge at the other side of the river. She walks towards me, threading her way through the crowds, but I don't think she sees me yet; she glances from side to side intermittently. Whether she's looking for me or enjoying the crowds, I can't tell. She looks a little different, and I try and work out what has changed. 

Her clothing was never extravagant, or calculated to ensnare a man, but it seems to have become even more modest since I last saw her, almost calculatedly so. She is wearing a dress of some pale grey stuff, with a plain and narrow skirt. It's so narrow, I wonder for a moment if she is wearing anything underneath, and then she kicks some straw from under her feet and I see a flash of petticoat. In this city, where it seems all the women, from my lady down to the milliner's daughter, are gaudy and overdressed, she looks inhuman, like a wraith walking amongst us.

I wonder if she realises that the absence of pleats and gatherings and an enormous crinoline (or layers of underskirts) emphasises her movements more - perhaps the opposite of the intended effect. I always loved the way she walked, and could watch her for hours as she moved about the garden or the house. She never attempted to glide, as proper ladies do, or swaggered for my benefit like the whores at the tavern, but her hips swayed naturally and her limbs swung with a animalistic ease. Her present mode of dress allows anyone with an eye for these things to appreciate her grace and innate sensuality.

I check the bridge for any men who might be admiring her, and then stop, because if I see any I might have to rip their heads off. Which would be fun, but might scare her away.

The dress buttons at the front to a high scooped neck and has full-length sleeves. I can see a tiny scrap of lace, peeping out from her neckline like the foam on the crest of a wave. When did she start with this nun-like fashion? At home she always wore her throat bare, and a bodice that seemed made for a lover to tease open and explore. Her arms were usually uncovered to the elbow at least. Indeed, if it were otherwise she could not have done her work without rolling up her sleeves.

I often used to come behind her as she bent over a washing tub, reach into the suds and run my hands along her bare arms. A short prelude to me turning her around, unbuttoning myself and guiding her hands to clasp me. Her hands would be warmed and softened by the water and the friction between her skin and mine eased by the soap. She quickly learned what I liked and would sheath me and slide her fingers slowly up and down, until I came, shuddering, in her hands, and then she'd clean me with her apron, which would be hurriedly removed afterwards and plunged into the tub. 

The biggest difference is her hair. At my Mother's insistence, she always used to tuck it away under a handkerchief or a mob-cap. But I think it was naturally unruly, and didn't like the restrictions she imposed. Sometimes, it would make bid for freedom and she would pass a mirror, groan, and have to spend a few minutes taming it again. 

Now some of it is gathered at the back of her head and held loosely, but the majority is freely falling around her shoulders, and she carries her hat, a large, black French-style cap, in one hand. Wisps of it fall over her breast, and the breeze sweeps it around her throat and then lifts it in a wild tangle which annoys her. She removes the pin from the back of her head, gathers a random sample of it together and refixes it, then pushes the rest back from her face and dumps the cap on her head, at a suitably Gallic, careless angle.

Suddenly I know what's changed. She just doesn't care how she looks anymore, and has no-one to tell her how she should dress. Her clothes have been chosen for comfort, or because she likes them. I doubt if she bothers trying to catch her own reflection in a polished surface any more than I do. She walks along the pavement without a care for anyone else; as if nothing could harm her; as if she were somehow protected from the world. She looks... at ease.

She's turned from a pretty lass into a beautiful woman.

My insides lurch as she draws closer; and my intentions are obscured to me again, as if a cloud had just passed over the moon and plunged us all into darkness. Darla would favour a quick and brutal kill, the sooner to relieve me of my obsession, has suggested, recommended and finally demanded it. But can I really give up this opportunity to possess her in other ways? Why shouldn't I have what he wanted?

Is she a false light beckoning me to madness and delusion? Or am I feeling a kick from the wheel, and should I give a little under its influence, in the interests of saving the ship?

She's alone.


End file.
